Mr. John Phelan:

I will preface everything I have to say by mentioning that my first career was in animation and games. I spent 15 years doing that before I went to the dark side of funding and financing technology start-ups. Six or eight months ago - this all comes back to Mr. Gaffney again - I was asked to consider taking the role of chair of Animation Ireland. I suppose I have a dual mandate while I am here. I represent the Dublin Business Innovation Centre. I have a number of hats in there. I will go through that in a moment. I am also the independent chair of Animation Ireland. I concur with everything that has been said by everyone here, particularly Ms Conway and Mr. Gaffney.

I will give the committee an overview of the context of the four core parts of what the Dublin Business Innovation Centre does. The first part of what we do is referred to as investor-ready business planning. While this is the softer side of our activity, it is actually the most difficult side. It is the real hardcore work because it involves getting really experienced consultants in with very early-stage start-ups. People with deep domain knowledge and international networking experience are needed to bring these start-ups to the next level and, ultimately, get them ready for investors so that they can get funding and thereby grow in scale and become sustainable international businesses.

The second part of what we do involves money, which is why people generally come to us. There are two parts to that. We run an early-stage seed fund - the AIB seed fund - which is a €53 million fund.

The third part of what we do involves managing the Halo Business Angel Network. Over the past seven years, we have used the network to bring €50 million of pure private capital into approximately 220 companies. The AIB seed fund has done approximately 40 deals in the past six years. Typically, we do a deal every two weeks throughout the year. A great deal of work and effort goes into that. An average deal size would be close to €500,000. We execute many good investment opportunities.

The fourth part of what we do involves running the Guinness Enterprise Centre, which is down by the Guinness Storehouse. It currently measures approximately 6000 sq. ft. and approximately 340 people are employed there. We are looking to double that. I will go into that in a moment.

I would like to address the question of what the Dublin Business Innovation Centre has achieved. I will read from the document in front of me, if the committee does not mind, because my eyesight is not that good. It is a private-public organisation. This means, in effect, that it tries to take in some public funds and to leverage what it can with the private organisations as well. It is one of the Irish business innovation centres, which are located in Galway, Cork, Waterford and Dublin. The centre in Dublin has been around for approximately 27 years. Over that time, it has created or helped to create approximately 570 businesses. Its involvement in the creation of a start-up does not merely involve meeting those involved. To us, a start-up is typically a company that has invoicing of approximately €50,000 per month and is sustainable.

We would be further along the line of a sustainable company we would call a start-up. Those 500 businesses would have more than 5,500 people employed directly and indirectly they would employ approximately 2,200. Over a 12-year period, we had an economic impact report carried out for us. It went down various different avenues and the result was that 80% of the companies we assisted are still in business five years later, which is a very high percentage for early stage start-ups. That is primarily because of the filtering process we have but also the inputs we have at the early stage such as one-to-one mentoring, which is very difficult to achieve. We also set up the AIB seed capital fund, AIBSCF, which is worth €53 million, and the Halo business angel network. The €50 million that has been invested has also leveraged about another €70 million, so about €120 million has gone into those 200 odd deals, which is significant.

My first career is part of the reason I am here, in terms of animation and games. I was involved in animation in Sullivan Bluth from 1987. Then I went to Warner Bros. in the UK and saw what happened there. Following that, I set up a studio in the UK. Strangely enough, when we had the studio in the UK we used to send work back to Brown Bag Films. From the UK I went to the United States to run a games company. I also used to send work back from there to the likes of Brown Bag Films as well. There is a whole diaspora of Irish creative industries that have come out of the likes of Sullivan Bluth and Murakami Wolf, which are spread all over the world. That network is still being tapped into by all of us and it is a great thing to have.

Part of what Dublin BIC does is that it has been engaged with Ms Conway and Ballyfermot College of Further Education over the years. Between us, a number of years ago, we created what was called The Bridge. Essentially, it took graduates from the colleges to work with the studios to give them a real life experience of the difference between education and business. The expectation is that when one is in an industry one has to have a certain mindset change. That was a very successful programme. I understand that about 30 of the graduates are now fully employed within the industry. What also came out of it was the Animation Skillnet, which we set up last year with the Irish Film Board, Ballyfermot College of Further Education and all the other colleges as well. We have 40 partner studios within that and we have trained over 400 employed and unemployed people with over 4,000 training days. The importance of that goes back to what Mr. Gaffney said, namely, that we have a great technology and creative business. The difference I see is that it is commercial creativity which is a very important difference. For commercial creativity, one must have people who are technically savvy and have the ability to execute on customers' demands. That is what we look for. Constant upskilling is required.

We see further potential. We have always said that we can double our impact with more resources. That is a very easy statement to make and on the basis of it, we have three asks. We would like to see continued support for the Guinness Enterprise Centre. We are currently engaged with the Minister, the Department, Dublin City Council, the LEOs, Diageo, Enterprise Ireland, the Guinness Workers Employment Fund and Trinity College, and have been for the past 12 months. They are the current partners that built the first stage of the Guinness Enterprise Centre which has those 340 people in it. We would like to double that space and we have been actively planning that for the past 12 months. We request assistance in that regard. Within that space we have considered, and are still considering, a media technology centre that would bring content and technology together and see how we can leverage that.

The second part of what we would like to do concerns the seed and venture capital fund. The first round of funding has closed for the €53 million seed fund that we currently have, so we are actively in the process of raising a second fund which will be early stage and growth. A number of years ago we looked at how we could create a real global pan-European fund that would be technically savvy and also with the broadcasters.

We did this with some of the studios around the table. We raised visibility of about 75% of a very significant fund with a digital partner and a broadcast partner. The idea was to bring the two together in order to gain access to a large global market with Irish brands. We may revisit that in times to come - I think now might be a good time to do it.

The ask, which is very straightforward, is continued support for the Guinness Enterprise Centre. We ask for help in doubling that space and doubling the employment from 340 to 680. There is potential for a media technology hub. We also ask for continued support for current and future investment funds such as the follow-on fund to the AIB seed fund and the potential pan-European media tech fund. Our third ask goes back to what Ms Conway and Mr. Gaffney have mentioned already, that is, upskilling, which we see as very important for the future. The Animation Skillnet is very important and a training programme has been developed between it and the Irish Film Board which we see as being very strong. We would also like to see the pipeline of talent through the colleges widened to allow more talent to filter into the companies and studios in the country.